GOG.com invites us to view a live stream of a presentation for their investors today on The Witcher Website, saying the conference will kick off at 12:30 pm EST, and that: "There will also be a special GOG.com part with a surprise for all fans of good games!" Not content to allow them their surprise, Eurogamer lets the cat out of the bag, saying "sources" tell them that the news is the Witcher 2 will go on sale on GOG.com on May 17, 2011, and true to the site's mission (besides the "old games," obviously), they say it will be "completely DRM-free." Thanks TaczBr.

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Making it easier for customers isn't the same goal as making it easier for pirates. You keep worrying about what the pirates get here but that isn't important in the slightest. The pirates will get whatever they want whenever they want it, nothing you do will really have an effect on that without also negatively impacting your legitimate consumer base. Instead of worrying about punishing people, they should be rewarding consumers and that's exactly what they are doing here. How do you turn pirates into consumers? With a carrot, not a stick. There is zero sense in making it more difficult for your consumers to enjoy your product, all you do there is potentially create another pirate or push them towards competitors.

DRM is meaningless and easily defeated the overwhelming majority of the time, it only really interferes with the legitimate customer experience.

oh I agree that piracy is an issue even with DRM but from what I hear Steam games are uncracked

Totally false, Steam games are as easy to crack as any other. I don't know a single Steam game that hasn't been pirated. There are even cracked servers for TF2. Fallout New Vegas was available less 2 hours after it went live on Steam(it is a Steamworks title).

Your right. I checked for steam cracks after I made my comment and did find some. its not about punishment but that most people when given a choice between free and paid legitamate, choose free. Piracy would be even more prevalent if more people were technically savvy enough even to use the cracks- most people I know are not that familiar with it. those are also the people that most hate DRM too because they make gaming too complex. Others hate it due to too many restrictions (like myself).

However, there are plenty of people savvy enough to find and use cracks. The industry loses too much money to people who can afford to buy the games (would-be customers) but steal it instead.

I don't claim to know the answer to this. thats why i'd be very curious to see the outcome of this release.